Tuesday, 12 February 2013

Out of step

This newfangled monitor I've got, that's maybe three years old and not exactly top of the line even then... if you speak VGA to it, the image quality is decidedly inferior. Even with a short cable. Being as how I use it for CAD, and every pixel counts, I use the DVI connection. (I tried using HDMI, but apparently this monitor reports inappropriate resolution data or some such, and the X server would come up in a bad configuration. Or maybe it was Windows that didn't work with the HDMI connection. One of those.)

Anyway! Having at last eliminated the last of the VGA-and-PS/2-only computers from the datacenter, and especially in light of the new workstation not really playing nice with PS/2, I'm kind of interested in replacing the KVM switch.

Thing is: the 4-port KVM switches that are on the market? The ones that don't cost, like, plural hundreds of dollars?

All VGA. Most of 'em are still PS/2, even; where's the market for such things?

Really, now: is everyone who needs a KVM switch either still in the VGA age or on a megacorp budget?

I'm almost tempted to build my own. It'd cost a fair bit more than buying one... but if I built a dozen, they'd come out a bunch cheaper, and maybe there would be a market for a, say, $100 four-port DVI-and-USB KVM switch?

But, apart from the basic hardware design (which is almost trivial), there's the hassle of making the USB keyboard & mouse bits play nice with keyboards, mice, and computers, all from sundry vendors. Presumably the companies that are peddling the VGA+USB products already have this.

So, being insufficiently motivated to float this on Kickstarter (and having more interesting things to do, besides), I rant and having ranted move on.

(Yeah, I just checked Newegg. Cheapest thing in the category is $165. Gets mostly favorable reviews... but apparently refuses to stay connected to the computer that you're rebooting, if another computer is active.)

Comments

I would guess that any intensive use is best done in a remote access fashion: ssh or remote desktop. That way, the remote computer doesn't even have to be physically close to your keyboard and monitor and you can have a giant two-link DVI monitor without putting an expensive graphics adapter in every computer, some of which may not even be upgradable. And no need to harmonize HDMI, DVI, two-link DVI, and displayport.

A KVM would then be relegated to monitoring bootup and resolving any associated issues. You'd want to minimize cost and VGA should be fine. IPMI will eat away at the high-end of KVM markets too.

I don't actually do all that much switching; mainly, the monitor is connected to the workstation and I have, variously, VNC, RDP, or NX connections to the various other machines (server, lab Linux, lab Windows). Also, these days, the second workstation running Windows is actually a virtual machine running on the primary workstation, so the console is all taken care of.
However... every so often, things do need rebooting, and when the server needs rebooting I may need to bounce back and forth between it and the workstation a few times before everything's back to normal and I can use the NX connection to manage the server.
Given the probably-permanent lack of need for a second workstation, I might just get a VGA+USB switch to replace the old one, and leave the main workstation as the only thing connected to the monitor via DVI.
I'm not convinced that a networked display connection would be appropriate when running display-intensive applications. Seems like 3D CAD (never mind a flight simulator) would get seriously bogged down; I've even noticed significant lagginess in running GUI debuggers via VNC. (Also, some CAD software refuses to run if it detects a remote desktop.)